P-05-784 Prescription drug dependence and withdrawal - recognition and support

This petition was
submitted by Stevie Lewis, having collected 213 signatures
online.

Petition
text:

​
We call on the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh
Government to take action to appropriately recognise and
effectively support individuals affected and harmed by prescribed
drug dependence and withdrawal.

This petition has been set up to raise awareness of the plight of
individuals in Wales who are affected by dependence on and
withdrawal from prescribed antidepressants and benzodiazepines
– and specifically to ask the Welsh Government to support the
BMA's UK-wide call for action to provide timely and appropriate
support for individuals affected.

The term "prescription drug dependence" refers specifically to the
situation where, having taken their antidepressant or
benzodiazepine medication exactly as prescribed by their doctor,
patients find they are unable to stop because of the debilitating
withdrawal effects. It is important to note here that addiction and
dependence are related but different issues. Use of the term
addiction implies pleasure seeking behaviour. Reporting of
prescription drug dependence in the media continues to allude to
"misuse" and "addiction" as if the patient is responsible in some
way for their own harm. This is far from the truth. There is no
pleasure whatsoever in finding that if you try to reduce or stop
your antidepressant, you suffer a wide range of physical and
emotional disturbances, that for some people can be life limiting
and, tragically, even life ending. Patients need formal
acknowledgement, support and guidance to help them through their
withdrawal journey and this currently does not
exist.​

Additional information:

The British Medical Association has recently highlighted the issue
of prescribed drug dependence. In May 2017, they wrote:
"Prescribing of psychoactive drugs is a major clinical activity and
a key therapeutic tool for influencing the health of patients. But
often their use can lead to a patient becoming dependent or
suffering withdrawal symptoms. In the absence of robust data, we do
not know the true scale and extent of the problem across the UK.
However, the evidence and insight presented to us by many charity
and support groups shows that it is substantial. It shows us that
the 'lived experience' of patients using these medications is too
often associated with devastating health and social harms. This
represents a significant public health issue, one that is central
to doctors' clinical role, and one that the medical profession has
a clear responsibility to help address." Because the side effects,
tolerance effects and withdrawal effects of these medicines are not
medically recognised for what they are, when patients develop these
related effects/symptoms they are often prescribed other medicines
and then polypharmacy complicates the problems further.

Affected patients are finding themselves with vague diagnoses eg:
'medically unexplained symptoms' or 'functional/somatic system
disorders'. These are essentially psychiatric diagnoses attributing
various debilitating and disabling physical symptoms to patients'
own anxiety, beliefs, etc. This has the effect of discounting,
disempowering and demoralising these patients still further. If it
cannot be acknowledged that patients can have sustained functional
nervous system dysfunction and damage as a consequence of taking
medicines 'as prescribed' (sometimes over many years), systemic
medical learning and improvement is stifled and patients continue
to be further harmed. Meanwhile the initial prescribing risks
remain severely underestimated and misleading prescribing
guidelines and 'best practice' advice is unchanged.

Status

This petition is
currently under consideration by the Petitions
Committee.